Ragnar takes a moment and reloads his crossbow, and then starts swimming towards the wreck.
He then takes the time to look into any holes in the hull for other critters.
"So, time to search a shipwreck. Interesting. One of those you dream about as child, that, somehow, is even weirder when you are breathing water and can take your time to nose about the wreck . . .."
Fulk helps the others search.
Searching through the Mistrunner's hold you find that most of the cargo has been completely damaged by its long immersion in water. However you do find the ships lockbox which seems intact and contains 400gp; a spyglass; 10 pearls worth 100gp and a +1 keen bladed scarf.
In addition you can see that this level of the seabed extends onwards to the west.
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It was probably too much to hope that the anchor rune would have been out here, Adonara considers ruefully. Too tempting and obvious a place to explore for anyone braving the reef.
That said, the fruits of the exploration aren’t anything to scoff at, and the courtesan is particularly delighted by the scarf: fashionable and discreetly deadly is very much what she aims for. It is a more awkward thing than the whips she favours, though, and she wonders if it would be possible to transfer the magic on it – perhaps especially to her whip, given the broad similarities of the mechanics of the thing, but maybe to one of the weapons of the gentlemen likelier to get in closer than she likes to in combat.
As the group prepares to move on, Adonara also wonders if necromancers have an instinctive feel for their creations at all, something that would let their quarry know that something’s happened to the draugr. It’s a side of the question of undead that she’s never really considered so far, and a trip to a library might be in order at some point.
She realizes she’s letting idle thoughts distract her from the matter at hand since she fully expects it’s going to get messier, so she forces herself to focus. With an inquiring gesture, she points to the slope further down towards the west, before leading the way, eyes alert for trouble.
"Any body secretly a Varisian Dancer?" Til asks, grinning, while looking directly at Adonara. "No? Shame."
Heading west the sea floor drops away into a vertiginous black pit here. The water above the shaft seems colder and darker than that around it, while the smooth-sided walls drop straight down into the depths, almost as if something had melted through the earth long ago. A ring of shattered coral growth surrounds the rim of the chasm.
Ragnar takes the lock bock and swims back to their ship to drop it off. He then returns to the group as they start to move towards the opening.
Looking at the damage around the opening.
Man this beastie does a lot of damage.
"Well, I don't like the look of that."
"Do you think the anchor is down there? Should we drop a lit stone and see how far it goes?" Valekar asks.
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"Any body secretly a Varisian Dancer?" Til asks, grinning, while looking directly at Adonara. "No? Shame."
“No, but we dancers often exchange tips and techniques,” Adonara says, flashing a smile over her shoulder. “Done right, it can be most mutually gratifying.”
And then she stops short at the edge of the pit. She’s inclined to agree with the others’ impressed murmurs, and she wonders what happened here. It doesn’t look like what she would imagine an underwater volcano would look like, but what does she know?
She stoops to pick up a piece of detritus in the tangle of coral at the rim, and lights it up with a cantrip as she makes sure it feels dense enough to sink quickly.
"Do you think the anchor is down there? Should we drop a lit stone and see how far it goes?" Valekar asks.
“This part does feel more like an eye, doesn’t it?” she says quietly, answering somewhat obliquely in the face of the unnerving sight, and tosses her lit-up rock lightly into the pit. As her own stare follows its trajectory down, she tries not to think about the likely reaction poking an eye is likely to produce.
Bachu peers over the edge looking for any clues of what is down there.
"Seems too obvious, but I have to. This takes I could fall into your eyes to a completely different level, doesn't it?"
I really doubt that it is down there, but I guess we will find out.
Ragnar keeps an eye out on things as the small object goes into the darkness.
Tilorean and Fulk you can see that in he shattered remains of the coral are several arcane symbols. Ragnar and Fulk you can tell that the symbols once contained the necromantic energy within the pit, but now the ward has been destroyed it would take months to regrow and repair.
Tilorean you also spot a huge fish like shape swimming lazily below in the dark water.
Those symbols there were to contain necromantic energy. But they will take months to replace.
"Exceptionally large fish-like thing swimming around down there. I say fish-like because fish should never be that big. Ever."
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Adonara’s grateful for the others’ focus, as her own eyes stick too close to the falling light to even really notice what it might illuminate. Along with the thoughts suggested by the name of the place, seeing light fall into cold darkness hits a bit too close to home for the courtesan.
She snaps out of it as the more observant point out what they’ve spotted, and tries to wrangle her thoughts again and put the pieces together.
Yes, Ragnar is right. They're pretty thoroughly broken."
Fish like ?? Where ??
Adonara, you recognise the creature as a zombie great white shark. It is huge in size and has damage reduction except against slashing weapons. It has a ten foot reach
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Now that her attention’s been drawn to it, Adonara peers down at the shape swimming about down below. Something about its movements is just that bit off in a way that she recognizes as someone trained to fight such unholy menaces, and she promptly pronounces, “It’s a zombie. Again, one of the best ways of dealing with it works less well underwater.”
There’s a quiet huff of bubbling breath that sounds vaguely like ‘bloody necromancers’ followed by a bit more Elven invective in grudging admiration against foes clever enough to exploit the environment to their best advantage, before she adds at a normal volume, “So, the wards up here are damaged, and with that thing lazing about down there, I’m not inclined to make any odds about the chances the stone we’re looking for is also in that direction. I can get us past, but that will only last as long as we don’t find anything else that needs to be taken down. Probably a question of whether we want to fight this shark now or risk leaving it behind us.”
I be thinking that we check around further up here afore we go playing with that nasty looking beastie.
"Maybe. MAYBE we won't have to go down there at all! Hey! A man can hope, right?" He looks about for a few quick glances. "Want to go look over there?"
You can see some other remains of shipwrecks, maybe 120 feet away from you at this level of the seabed.
"We can check up here first. But when we do have to go down there, I'd rather not leave it at our back."
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“Duly noted,” Adonara acknowledges, before adding with a show of optimism, “Maybe its teeth can be turned into something pretty afterwards.”
Given what Ragnar and Fulk pointed out, she takes the time to cast her own cantrip to see if she can get a sense of the lingering aura of the temporarily inactive coral wards, and if there’s any hint of a link to the new anchor that’s compromised them.
As she kicks off to start swimming to the next nearest wreck, she adds, “Though speaking of pretty things, I think we probably should brave the depths before too long and before I get so prune-y that it will take ages to smooth out again. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be the only one put out by such a development.”